the poor poet, whose only possession was the invisible laurel-wreath which adorned his noble brow, accorded him by the German people.

His countless admirers saw him in their inspired thoughts with his youthful head entwined with laurel, and would, no doubt, have been horrified if they could have seen him in his dressing-gown, the nightcap pulled down over the laurel, stooping in front of his iron stove and endeavoring to rekindle the coals with his breath, in order that his coffee might be warmed a little.

But it was a vain endeavor. The fire was almost out, the coals glowed but faintly, and the poet’s breath was not strong enough to renew the flame.

“All in vain,” sighed Schiller, replacing the coffee-pot on the ashes, with a disconsolate shrug of the shoulders; “where there is no fuel, there can be no fire.”

He slowly arose from his kneeling position, and, his hands folded behind his back, walked with rapid strides to and fro in his little chamber. The dimly-burning tallow-candle which stood on the table, covered with papers and books, flared up whenever he passed, and illuminated, for the moment, the large rugged figure and the pale countenance, with the high forehead and light-blue eyes. At first this countenance wore a gloomy, troubled look. But by degrees it assumed another expression; and soon the flaring light showed in this dingy little room the features of an inspired poet, with sparkling eyes, and an exulting smile.

“Yes,” he exclaimed, in a loud voice, “yes, it shall be so! I will append this scene to the third act, and it must be the loftiest and grandest of the entire tragedy. Not to Prince Carlos or to the queen shall Posa proclaim his sublime ideas of liberty and his plans for the happiness of the people. No, he shall hurl them in the face of the tyrant, of King Philip himself. With the lightning of his words he shall warm this rock of tyranny, and unseal the spring of inspiration in the breast of the man-despising, bigoted ruler, and make the waters of human love play joyfully! Oh, ye eternal gods, give me words, fire my thoughts, and give wings to my inspiration, that I may be able to give expression, in a flow of rapture and poetry, to that which now fills my whole soul!”

He rushed to his table and threw himself with such violence into his old stool that it groaned and cracked beneath him. But Schiller paid no attention to this; his whole soul was in his work, his whole heart was filled with enthusiasm and delight. His hand flew over the paper, his smile brightened, his countenance became more radiant. At times he dictated to himself in a loud, energetic voice, the words which his flying pen conveyed to the paper, that they might henceforth to all eternity be indelibly imprinted in the hearts of his readers. But Schiller was not thinking of his readers, nor of the possible effect of his words; he thought only of his work. There was no room in his soul but for poetry, for the sublime and lofty scene which he wished to add to his tragedy. “Oh,” he now exclaimed, his pen speeding like an arrow over the rustling paper, “oh, could the combined eloquence of all the thousands who are interested in this lofty hour, but tremble on my lips, to fan the spark which I feel into a flame! Abandon this unnatural idolatry that destroys us. Be our model of the eternal and the true, and—”

A severe and painful cough interrupted the enraptured poet; he was compelled to discontinue his recitation; the pen faltered in his quivering hand; and from the sublime realms of the ideal, bodily pain recalled the poet to reality. He let fall the pen, the arrow which the gods had bestowed, to enable him to divide the clouds of prejudice and throw open to enraptured humanity the heaven of poetry,—he let fall the pen, and raised his hand to his trembling, panting breast.

“How it pains, how it pricks!” he groaned. “Is it not as if the tyrant Philip had thrust his dagger into the breast of poor Posa, in the anger of his offended majesty, and—”

Another attack of coughing silenced him, and resounded through the quiet solitary chamber. The sound struck upon his ear so dismally that he cast a hasty glance behind him into the gloomy space, as if looking for the ghost which had uttered such dreary tones.

“If this continues, I am hardly repaid for having fled from my tyrannical duke,” murmured Schiller. “Truly I had better have remained and served out my poor miserable existence as regimental surgeon, than cough my life out as a German, that is, as a hungry poet.”

But as he said this, his lips quivered, and self-reproach was depicted in his countenance.

“Be still,” he exclaimed, “be still! Shame upon you, Schiller, for uttering such unmanly, cowardly words! You a poet, Frederick Schiller? you are not even a man! You aspire to ascend the heights of Parnassus, and sink down disheartened and discouraged when an evil annoys you on the way, and admonishes you that you are only a man, a mortal who aspires to climb to the seat of the gods. If you are a poet, Frederick Schiller, remember that the gods are watching over you, and that they will not cruelly abandon you before the goal is half achieved.

“No,” he exclaimed in a loud voice, raising his head, and looking upward, “no, the gods will not abandon me! They will give me strength and health and a long life, that I may accomplish the task which my soul and mind and heart tell me is required at my hands. No, Parnassus stands before me, and I will climb it!” His beaming eye glanced upward in ecstasy and saw not the low dusty ceiling, the want and indigence by which he was surrounded. He gazed into immensity; the low ceiling opened to his view, and through it “he saw the heavens and the countenance of the blessed!”

A loud noise in the street awakened him from his trance. It was the watchman blowing his horn and calling the hour in stentorian tones.

“Four o’clock,” murmured Schiller, “the night approaches its end!—and my candle also,” he continued, smiling, as he looked at the brass candlestick, from the upper rim of which the softened tallow was falling in heavy drops, while the wick had sunk down into the liquid mass.

Schiller shrugged his shoulders. “It appears that I must stop in the middle of my grand scene and go to bed. My good friend Streicher has in vain begged me to do so, through his musical messenger of love; and now a tallow-candle compels me to do so! What poor, miserable beings we men are! A trifling, inanimate, material thing has more power over us than the spirit, and while we oppose the latter we must submit to be overcome by the former! Therefore to bed, to bed! Farewell, my Posa! The poor human creature leaves you for a few hours, but the lofty human mind will soon return to you! Good-night, my Posa!”

The wick of the miserable candle flared up once more and then expired with a crackling noise in the liquid tallow. “That is as it should be,” laughed Schiller; “the poet, like the mule, must be able to find his way in the dark on the verge of an abyss!”

He groped his way through the little room to his bedchamber, and undressed himself rapidly; and the loud, regular breathing soon announced that the young poet, Frederick Schiller, was wrapped in health-giving and refreshing slumber.

CHAPTER II.

THE TRIALS OF LIFE.

Frederick Schiller still slept, although the pale winter sun of December stood high in the heavens, and the streets of the little city of Mannheim had long since awakened to new life and activity. Frederick Schiller still slept, and, worn out by his long vigils, his work, and his cough, might have slept on for a